Central Park...in the middle of Manhattan is huge...843 acres. it was created in 1857 and designed the following year by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. As Wikipedia points out, although the park looks natural..it is almost all landscaped. It is estimated to get 35 million visitors a year.
Here is just a brief part of Wikipedia's history (
visit link) of the park:
"New York City's need for a great public park was voiced by the poet and editor of the Evening Post (now the New York Post), William Cullen Bryant, and by the first American landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing, who began to publicize the city's need for a public park in 1844. A stylish place for open-air driving, similar to the Bois de Boulogne in Paris or London's Hyde Park, was felt to be needed by many influential New Yorkers, and, after an abortive attempt in 1850-51 to designate Jones's Wood, in 1853 the New York legislature settled upon a 700-acre (280 ha) area from 59th to 106th Streets for the creation of the park, at a cost of more than US$5 million for the land alone.[citation needed]
The state appointed a Central Park Commission to oversee the development of the park, and in 1857 the commission held a landscape design contest. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux developed what came to be known as the "Greensward Plan," which was selected as the winning design.
According to Olmsted, the park was "of great importance as the first real Park made in this century—a democratic development of the highest significance…," a view probably inspired by his stay and various trips in Europe during 1850.[13] He visited several parks during these trips and was particularly impressed by Birkenhead Park and Derby Arboretum in England.
Several influences came together in the design. Landscaped cemeteries, such as Mount Auburn (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Green-Wood (Brooklyn, New York) had set examples of idyllic, naturalistic landscapes. The most influential innovations in the Central Park design were the "separate circulation" systems for pedestrians, horseback riders, and pleasure vehicles. The "crosstown" commercial traffic was entirely concealed in sunken roadways, (today called "transverses"), screened with densely-planted shrub belts so as to maintain a rustic ambience.
The Greensward plan called for some 36 bridges, all designed by Vaux, ranging from rugged spans of Manhattan schist or granite, to lacy neo-gothic cast iron; no two are alike. The ensemble of the formal line of the Mall's doubled allées of elms culminating at Bethesda Terrace, whose centerpiece is the Bethesda Fountain, with a composed view beyond of lake and woodland, was at the heart of the larger design.
Before the construction of the park could start, the area had to be cleared of its inhabitants,[14] most of whom were quite poor and either free African Americans or residents of English or Irish origin. Most of them lived in small villages, such as Seneca Village, Harsenville, or the Piggery District; or else in the school and convent at Mount St. Vincent's Academy. Around 1,600 residents occupying the area at the time, were evicted under the rule of eminent domain during 1857. Seneca Village and parts of the other communities were razed to make room for the park."
The Park has just about everything you would want in a park...lots of open space, picnic areas, a Zoo...with a Children's Zoo, walking and running trails, a bandshell, lakes, playgrounds, a carousel, a theatre, statues too numerous to mention etc.
The coordinates given relate to the Central Park Zoo.